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Aquatic and Wetland Vascular Plants of the Northern Great Plains

Caryophyllaceae - The Pink Family

Annual or perennial herbs, often with a sticky, glandular pubescence. Leaves simple, opposite, sessile, entire, usually exstipulate. Flowers perfect, regular, solitary in forks of the stem or in terminal cymes; sepals 5; petals 5, often reduced or absent, often bilobed or deeply cleft, white or pinkish; stamens usually numbering the same or twice the number of the sepals, sometimes fewer; pistil 3- or 5-carpellary, styles 3 or 5, ovary superior, 1-celled. Fruit a many-seeded capsule, dehiscent by valves or terminally by teeth.

Lead	Characteristic	Go To
1	Stipules present, scarious; leaves rather succulent.	Genus Spergularia
1	Stipules none; leaves not succulent.	Lead 2
2	Capsules laterally dehiscent by valves; styles 3.	Genus Stellaria
2	Capsules terminally dehiscent by teeth; styles 5.	Genus Cerastium

14. Caryophyllaceae, the Pink Family

1. Cerastium L.--Mouse-ear chickweed

1. Cerastium brachypodum (Engelm. ex A. Gray) Robins.

2. Cerastium nutans Raf.

2. Spergularia J. & C. Presl -- Sand-spurry

1. Spergularia marina (L.) Griseb.-- Salt-marsh sand-spurry

3. Stellaria L. -- Stitchwort

1. Stellaria crassifolia Ehrh.

2. Stellaria longifolia Muhl. ex Willd. -- Long-leaved stitchwort

3. Stellaria longipes Goldie

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